Highlander Enchanted(88)
It was a four hour trek back to the center of the property. I hiked through the forest, always sensitive to the creatures living here. While I’d catch and eat them if I had to, I also wasn’t going to disturb their daily lives by leaving messes or destroying their homes. Herakles was strict about appreciating and respecting the domain of Artemis and Dionysis and all their children.
My mind kept returning to the creature. I wasn’t able to flush the image of the terrifying creature standing beside the lake from my thoughts. It didn’t seem to be a part of nature, yet it had to be. Everything was, except for the gods and goddesses, who were still part of nature, just a different nature from ours.
Lost in thought, I didn’t notice the drone of an airplane until it roared overhead. I looked up, unaccustomed to hearing them quite so low, but not alarmed to see the plane. A municipal airport was nearby. It was how the priests brought in guest speakers and other visitors from outside the area.
Unconcerned, I continued on my hike, unable to prevent the occasional look over my shoulder. I’d hear the creature if it was following me, but similar to my hope that bad things didn’t happen during the day, I wasn’t fully convinced.
The tip of the roof of the manor house was soon visible through the trees. Suddenly, the ground beneath my feet quaked. I caught myself against a tree and was about to curse under my breath when an explosion ripped through the air. Fire belched into the sky from the direction of the compound. I stared at it and the black smoke chasing it before bolting towards home.
The pounding of my heart filled my ears, and I mentally went through one of the checklists Herakles forced me to recite during exercises. I was assessing what the sound was and how many priests were present during the weekend when I reached the edge of the greens and stopped.
The mansion was in flames. The small plane had smashed straight into it before exploding. Smoke billowed off the building into the sky. Two priests in brown robes stood, stunned, in the greens. I hesitated only a moment before racing to them.
“Father Cristopolos!” I cried.
Both faced me. “Thank the gods,” Father Cristopolos breathed. The eldest of the priests, he was around fifty, bald and beefy.
“Are you hurt? Herakles and I have a stash of medical –”
“Come with me.” Rather than race towards the fire and those who might need help, Father Cristopolos snatched my arm and hurried towards the forest, back from the direction I just came.
“But – ” I twisted, worried about those who might be trapped in the wreckage or fire.
“You are not to leave the forest!”
“Father, I can –”
“You are not to leave the forest!” This time he squeezed my arm tightly enough that my attention went from what was happening behind us to his face. His features were blanched, his eyes bulging and jaw clenched so hard, the muscles of his cheeks ticked.
We reached the forest, and he pushed me behind the tree line. Whipping off the red cord belt he wore, he tossed it at the edge of the greens.
“Do not cross the boundary,” he ordered.
“What? But –”
“Alessandra!” He snatched both my arms and shook me until I met his gaze. “Do not step past the boundary or all we have done here for the past twelve years is destroyed.”
I had no idea what he was talking about, but his face and unusual intensity scared me. The normally calm priest was freaking out. “Okay,” I said, concerned. “Do you want to know where our medical stash is?”
“We have our own.” Without another word, he whirled and hurried back to join the other priest, who had moved to help a third stumble out of the collapsing building.
I watched helplessly, hating to be excluded like usual. The red belt near my feet was expanding and stretching the way the boundaries did whenever the priests adjusted them. The cords retained some sort of unidentified magic, and the red rope snaked quickly away to outline the perimeter of the greens. I didn’t understand the importance of a barrier that didn’t actually prevent people from coming and going and paced, aching to help.
It wasn’t the apocalypse, but I was trained for emergency response and dressing wounds caused by pretty much anything.
Instead, I was sidelined again by the priests, left out when I should have been helping.
All of the nymphs and most of the staff were in town for the day. The five priests who stayed back were soon all accounted for with only one injured. I watched them huddle and speak, guessing they needed to figure out how to house thirty nymphs now that a plane had gone done in the middle of the compound. The building imploded completely into piles of rubble and everything that was flammable continued to burn.
I stressed about wanting to help until the fire department came and put out the blaze. One priest was taken away in an ambulance. The others were checked out by paramedics and released.
I stayed in the forest, saddened to see my home of twelve years destroyed while also hoping this was the impetus to enter the real world and go to a hotel for the rest of the weekend.
I nibbled on food I’d taken for my camping trip. The firemen left the smoldering ruins of our home around one o’clock, and I stared glumly at the scene before me. I began to think the priests had forgotten about me when Father Cristopolos pointed in my direction.
Perking up, I stood as my favorite priest, Father Ellis, headed towards me.